Coming to Gijon , small northern Spanish town, for more or less one purpose on Friday evening. To see Aphex Twin next day. Friday was supposed to be more or less an added value for me, so I didn’t really take it so seriously. Mistake. As it turned out, on Friday night lots of interesting things happened as well, so finally this report is gonna be a bit longer than expected. But to stop blabbering around:
Friday morning the usual. The alarm clock ringing. Turned it off. But something kept nagging at my mind and after a few minutes it came. Fuck, I need to catch the bus to Gijon. Stressful way followed, accompanied by a very nice discovery that I had demagnetized my credit card by my mobile phone and that we would have to live on 50 Euros during these three days. Rich holiday ahead, lots of beers and eating out double portions of salmon only.
After six long hours in weird, trying to sleep positions we finally came to Gijón. The city itself is not really anything special, even though surfers would disagree, small pretty usual town with lots of wind and (as I was going to feel during the night) cold. Then came the finding of the camp and as I still hadn´t realized how grave my budget was I took a bus to get there. During the way I finally realized how little money I have and there started my new, especially sweet diet. Bread with nutella. Then we unexpectedly fell asleep in the newly built tent, four hours of pleasant blankness, waking at something like 12 and enjoying my first way to the festival on foot (bus = money, eat the rich approach has its difficulties). Obvious, using all my powers with orientation skills I got lost and finally, after hour and a half of wandering half in fields half between the houses of the rich (eat them!!!), I got to the university area of the festival.
And finally I can start spitting superlatives. Festival with lots of people attending but not too much, superb just newly construed venue in the university
with big screen, ideal for the audiovisual concept, no organizational problems, no nazi security guys that almost look up your ass to see whether you are not, for god´s sake, carrying something to drink, all in a pleasant, nice atmosphere with nice people around (no trace of the all so clever all so intellectual guys who live the music), just a nice party.So we entered the venue and we came exactly for what we wanted. Kelpe was playing. Nice British IDM, cleverly composed beats and arrangements, not overtly original but perfectly functional and enjoyable. The projections nicely fitted the music, sketchy, erratic blend of calming motives, emerging and disappearing, bleeping, a stuck computer switching screen savers to progress to new motives. But to give Kelpe all the credits would be unfair, as he wasn´t alone on the stage, lots of work was done also done by the live drummer, enjoyable to see, enjoyable to listen, as a whole kinda similar to the recent Diamond Watch Wrists by Prefuse 73 and Zach Hill but instrumental and not so broken.
After a little pause there came the main star of the evening, Daedelus. I have to admit I didn´t expect much. Heard his new CD like once and didn´t catch my attention so I expected nice but a bit boring show. But the sweetest surprise of the festival (exactly why I love such events) was just waiting ahead. From the first song infectiously catchy but clever dance music with an eccentric director (and here the word really fits as Daedelus knew perfectly how to make fun for the people in front of him and how to make people dance how he wanted) in Victorian style suit. DIVERSITY, sweet but not over the top melodies, dance rhythms but not headhurting repetition of all the same around, bits of dance, hip hop beats, ambient, abstract rhythms, mixing inside things on one hand in such intellectual veins as Beirut and on the other tough rap niggaz, only wish all the party music could be like that. Seriously I even started to like the album afterwards and it has been one of the most frequent discs spinning around in my playlist. Just to get yourself in a positive mood after one hundred and one days of grey, click here.
Next one to go? Moderat (= Modeselktor + Apparat). Here no surprise happened. Expected boredom from Modeselektor, boredom from Apparat and guess what I got. Two times boredom. One song and out.
Here comes the crucial point of explaining and pouring out my soul. I love bothering people in reports by all kinda alcoholic stories or just counting of beers but in this one you will find nothing like that. Why? The reason is quite simple. I had no money. So I need to find another thing to bother you with and the solution comes quite easy. No money stories, begging, cold, bread with nutella make a perfect substitute for the usual.
After the five minutes of Moderat, the long way home. Here I will adopt the style of storytelling of my old friend Roman from Siberia. Cold. Forest. Cold. Houses. Rich houses. Cold. Dogs. Big dogs. Cold. Road. Big road. Gate. Through gate. Tent. Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Long Sleep.
Day two
Waking up at something like eleven in the morning, sweet fragrance immediately entered my nose. Nutella. I take the bread beside it and get out to of the tent to have breakfast. This time the bread was a bit harder, chewier, and Nutella had an unusually sweet taste.
After having a breakfast we decided to go for some sightseeing to Gijon. As I
have already told, the city is not really special by anything, just a normal small Spanish town. But something important happened anyways. We went for a meal into a restaurant. Of course we shared one menu in two (because they wouldn´t give us two plates to eat from we had to eat from the same plate even), but still it was a considerable change of the menu and one was feeling almost rich (shame, shame, shame), not such a bad feeling after all I have to say.Then we came back to the camp to watch the match of the year in Spanish football league, Real Madrid vs. FC Barcelona. Still feeling a bit high after the meal, the pattern of outrageously large spending continued, two beers per person, but it was well worth it. Barcelona ruined all dreams that Madrid had for the primacy in the league and the pub was obviously pretty happy about it, anti-centralism works in Spain as well.
When the football ended we set out for the festival area. This time sharp senses didn´t let anything wrong, no mistakes ending with a desolate field, straight the shortest way for the area, 45 minutes and we were where we wanted to be. Smuggling in a bottle of coke mixed with whisky (things that I managed to bring from Madrid) and quick, quick for the musical productions.
To put it bluntly: second day was more or less only waiting for Aphex Twin. The musical productions before him were either mediocre or slightly above, not so bad as to go away (into the cold) but also not so good as to bang your head. The first one was Eedl, the worst performance I have seen on the festival. Mediocre IDM with tired beats, thousand times played sound “experiments” and boring visual projection. A bit more enjoyable than listening to sound of your modem crunching but still better than staying out in the cold. However, if you add nice dancing under influence lady in front of us, then turning into nice under influence rolling on the floor and finally finishing the story by quickly leaving for the toilets, well, not that bad. More pleasant part of the waiting came with Alva Noto, nice noisy German electronica, although I ha
Just abit of anxious waiting, the lights go out and the show we had been waiting for begins. Just to get you I context: it wasn´t a solo Aphex Twin gig, his collaborator for this show was Tim Hecker (hard to say whether it was a plus or a minus). And it started noisy, dirty, danceable, often on the boards of electro music. But obvious, Aphex Twin being the DJ, a bit diffe
Then. Want home. Walk. Cold.
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